The very title of this game practically tells you all you need to know. Tilt to live or be content in dying quickly because you were far too stubborn to move your ship (way to go, Skippy, you showed The Man by not giving into another one of his arbitrary demands).

Gameplay

I can sum this up in a single sentence. Tilt your iDevice to avoid the red dots long enough for you to trigger one of the game?s many weapons and take out as many of the red bastages as possible. Once you hit the ?New Game? button, get your grubby little fingers off the screen, as the gameplay is entirely accelerometrically controlled! Things will start off nice and slow with just a small handful of red dots popping onto the screen, but within just a few more seconds you?ll soon see these red dots coming in huge swarms, all with the single intent of smacking into your poor little ship. The only way to keep this Red Menace in check is to blow them back to wherever they came from with the various Weapon Bubbles scattered about the playfield. Just ram your ship into one of them and the weapon is triggered (be it some guided missiles, a freezing cloud, or maybe a nuclear blast).

What really set this game apart from other "tilters" is its great sense of style and humor. Just try not to stifle a groan when you earn the many wacky achievement titles, I dare you. Besides simply trying to dominate all of your friends with your insane score, the game hooks you in by having you working your pants off to earn as many of the achievements as possible to unlock many of the game's initially locked weapon systems. Once you've got some of these advanced weapon systems in the mix, you?ll see your points soar.

Graphics & Sound

The graphics are good fun minimalistic 2D vector graphics in vibrant colors and smoothly animated. The unique sounds for each of the weapon systems are spot on as well as the game?s surfy soundtrack.

Pros:- Incredibly smooth tilt controls that include a number of preset calibrations as well as a custom one so you can play the game at any angle that works best for you.- The game?s achievement names are hands down the best I?ve seen so far in any iPhone game.- Beyond the wacky names for the achievements, the various shapes the red particles take up, the sound effects, music, and even the bizarre collection of weapons make it clear that, while incredibly polished, this game doesn?t take itself too seriously. It is a game and it knows it.

Cons:- The game throws a bit of a paradox at the player. The primary way the player is going to unlock the wackier weapon systems is by scoring huge combos but in order to score the really huge combos you?d need these advanced weapon systems. If you just keep at it, however, you?ll surely unlock all of the 5 extra weapon systems but it can be frustrating when you?re lucky to break 50,000 and you?re hearing about scores in the TENS OF MILLIONS!

Conclusion

I really love this game. If a fan of completely tilt based avoidance games, kind of like the indie hit, Starball, you?ll LOVE this one!

Ratings (scale of 1 to 5):

Graphics: -4.5- While you probably wouldn?t expect much from a game who?s main opponents are ?Red Dots?, this game pulls it off with such style, cool animation, and cool effects when the various weapons kick in.

Sound: -4.5- I love the game?s cool weapon effects (complete with radio chatter when the missiles are launched) as well as the surf themed soundtrack.

Controls: -5- Incredibly intuitive tilt controls with many calibrations to choose from that allow you to easily pull off some incredibly intricate maneuvers.

Gameplay: -5- A great and original addition to the halls of tilt only games! If not simply gunning for a highscore is enough to motivate you, just see if you can unlock all of the game?s achievements, not just for bragging rights but also to see the incredibly goofy names they developers attributed to them.

Playing Hints and Tips:

- The key to highscores as well as unlocking most of the achievements, is trying to get as big a combo as possible. Once you get how the various weapons work see if you can even work it where you stream a bunch of kills in rapid succession (not just killing a screenful of baddies with a single weapon, but triggering one weapon to take out a bunch of baddies while setting off the next weapon before the first one finishes so as to create a continuous wave of death).

- While most of the game?s achievements could be earned without any special precautions just by kicking the game?s ass (getting a huge number of combos or achieving certain milestone scores), there are a few that might go counter intuitive to standard gameplay. So if you find your having trouble unlocking the last couple of weapons in the game you might want to start reading through the list of potential awards on Agon and see if there might be a few you hadn?t already unlocked but could easily enough by playing in some weird way (trying not to touch any weapons, only using a single weapon type, etc.).

-An ever so slight overlap of your ship to a dot is allowed. So, for example, even if there seems to be a fairly solid wall of dots coming at you, unless they really have formed a solid wall, you might still be able to squeak in between two dots if you can work it so you're only overlapping a couple of pixes worth of ship over dot.

Hiya! Thanks for the review and comments!We've gotten a lot of positive feedback along with a litany of suggestions and ideas. We're currently working on a new update for Tilt to Live that we think will really set the game up to be even more fun than it already is . We'll definitely have more news on the details in the coming weeks.

Just another random tip:- The awards are sorted by increasing difficulty. So give the easy ones a try if you're finding it difficult to unlock weapons!

Quote:Hiya! Thanks for the review and comments!We've gotten a lot of positive feedback along with a litany of suggestions and ideas. We're currently working on a new update for Tilt to Live that we think will really set the game up to be even more fun than it already is . We'll definitely have more news on the details in the coming weeks.

Just another random tip:- The awards are sorted by increasing difficulty. So give the easy ones a try if you're finding it difficult to unlock weapons!

Thanks for dropping by and, doh, I totally missed that the awards are actually listed in a bit of a logical order. So does that mean, for the most part, this is also a clue as to their point values? I'm assuming it goes without saying that the award at the top of the list is worth only a fraction of points the award at the bottom is?